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Introduction by China Miéville Long acknowledged as a master of nightmarish visions, H. P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries-and their encounter with untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization-is a milestone of macabre literature. This exclusive new edition, presents Lovecraft's masterpiece in fully restored form, and includes his acclaimed scholarly essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature." This is essential reading for every devotee of classic terror.

Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson's growth-a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson's own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson's story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father's political isolation after the Whig Party's collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice.The definitive treatment of Dickinson's life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.

A Modern Library Paperback OriginalDuring the first years of the twentieth century, the British plant collector and explorer Frank Kingdon Ward went on twenty-four impossibly daring expeditions throughout Tibet, China, and Southeast Asia, in search of rare and elusive species of plants. He was responsible for the discovery of numerous varieties previously unknown in Europe and America, including the legendary Tibetan blue poppy, and the introduction of their seeds into the world's gardens. Kingdon Ward's accounts capture all the romance of his wildly adventurous expeditions, whether he was swinging across a bottomless gorge on a cable of twisted bamboo strands or clambering across a rocky scree in fear of an impending avalanche. Drawn from writings out of print for almost seventy-five years, this new collection, edited and introduced by professional horticulturalist and House & Garden columnist Tom Christopher, returns Kingdon Ward to his deserved place in the literature of discovery and the literature of the garden.

Written in elegant and precise prose, Don Vicente contains two novels in F. Sionil José''s classic Rosales Saga. The saga, begun in José''s novel Dusk, traces the life of one family, and that of their rural town of Rosales, from the Philippine revolution against Spain through the arrival of the Americans to, ultimately, the Marcos dictatorship.        The first novel here, Tree, is told by the loving but uneasy son of a land overseer. It is the story of one young man''s search for parental love and for his place in a society with rigid class structures. The tree of the title is a symbol of the hopes and dreams--too often dashed--of the Filipino people.         The second novel, My Brother, My Executioner, follows the misfortunes of two brothers, one the editor of a radical magazine who is tempted by the luxury of the city, the other an activist who is prepared to confront all of his enemies, real or imagined. The critic I. R. Cruz called it "a masterly symphony" of injustice, women, sex, and suicide.        Together in Don Vicente, they form the second volume of the five-novel Rosales Saga, an epic the Chicago Tribune has called "a masterpiece."

William Shawn once called The Talk of the Town the soul of the magazine. The section began in the first issue, in 1925. But it wasn''t until a couple of years later, when E. B. White and James Thurber arrived, that the Talk of the Town story became what it is today: a precise piece of journalism that always gets the story and has a little fun along the way.The Fun of It is the first anthology of Talk pieces that spans the magazine''s life. Edited by Lillian Ross, the longtime Talk reporter and New Yorker staff writer, the book brings together pieces by the section''s most original writers. Only in a collection of Talk stories will you find E. B. White visiting a potter''s field; James Thurber following Gertrude Stein at Brentano''s; Geoffrey Hellman with Cole Porter at the Waldorf Towers; A. J. Liebling on a book tour with Albert Camus; Maeve Brennan ventriloquizing the long-winded lady; John Updike navigating the passageways of midtown; Calvin Trillin marching on Washington in 1963; Jacqueline Onassis chatting with Cornell Capa; Ian Frazier at the Monster Truck and Mud Bog Fall Nationals; John McPhee in virgin forest; Mark Singer with sixth-graders adopting Hudson River striped bass; Adam Gopnik in Flatbush visiting the ìgrandest theatre devoted exclusively to the movies; Hendrik Hertzberg pinning down a Sulzberger on how the Times got colorized; George Plimpton on the tennis court with Boris Yeltsin; and Lillian Ross reporting good little stories for more than forty-five years. They and dozens of other Talk contributors provide an entertaining tour of the most famous section of the most famous magazine in the world.

First published by Random House in 1968, Russell H. Greenan's "It Happened in Boston? is the story of a brilliantly talented, unbalanced artist who strives to meet God face-to-face in order to destroy Him. It is "a magic spell of a book--phantasmagoric, lushly written, full of unforgettable characters and brilliant twists of plot," writes Jonathan Lethem in his Introduction. With a vivid depiction of the art world and a breathtaking narrative that incorporates forgery, time travel, and murder, Greenan's hilarious and disturbing debut novel--now an underground cult classic--is ripe for rediscovery.

First published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann's Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann's daughter Gilberte, the narrator visits the seaside resort of Balbec with his grandmother and meets a new object of attention—Albertine, "a girl with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks.”For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

"If the phrase 'woman of letters' existed, [Joyce Carol Oates] would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it."-John Updike, The New YorkerAs powerful and relevant today as it was on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous lives of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her "potent, life-gripping imagination," Joyce Carol Oates traces the aspirations and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who is filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent destinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to survive in a world of violence and danger. Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novel about love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is, raves The New York Times, "a superbly accomplished vision."Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.[Oates is] a superb storyteller. For sheer readability, them is unsurpassed."-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In this cogent volume, historian Martin Marty gives readers of all faiths a brief yet sweeping account of Christianity and how it grew from a few believers two thousand years ago to become the world’s largest religion. He depicts the life of Christ and his teachings and explains how the apostles set out to spread the Gospel. With a special emphasis on global Christianity, Marty shows how the religion emerged from its ancestral homeland in Africa, the Levant, and Asia Minor, was imported to Europe, and then expanded from there to the rest of the world. While giving a broad overview, Marty also focuses on specific issues, such as how Christianity attempts to reconcile with the teachings of Christ some of its stances on armed conflict, justice, and dominion. The Christian World is a remarkable testament to how Christ’s message has touched human experience everywhere.

Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point. Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.

"Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey's book proves it, without wasting a word."-Lee Eisenberg, author of The Number In Baseball, one of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles and triumphs, and performs a marvelous feat: making a classic story seem refreshingly new. Baseball is a narrative of America's can-do spirit, in which stalwart immigrants such as Henry Chadwick could transplant cricket and rounders into the fertile American culture and in which die-hard unionist baseballers such as Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack could eventually become the tightfisted avatars of the game's big-money establishment. It's a celebration of such underdogs as a rag-armed catcher turned owner named Branch Rickey and a sure-handed fielder named Curt Flood, both of whom flourished as true great men of history. But most of all, Baseball is a testament to the unbreakable bond between our nation's pastime and the fans, who've remained loyal through the fifty-year-long interdict on black athletes, the Black Sox scandal, franchise relocation, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by some major stars. Reverent, playful, and filled with Vecsey's charm, Baseball begs to be read in the span of a rain-delayed doubleheader, and so enjoyable that, like a favorite team's championship run, one hopes it never ends. "Vecsey possesses a journalist's eye for detail and a historian's feel for the sweep of action. His research is scrupulous and his writing crisp. This book is an instant classic-a highly readable guide to America's great enduring pastime."-The Louisville Courier Journal

Introduction by JEREMY TREGLOWN"In his daily walks through London,” notes Jeremy Treglown in his Introduction to this collection, "Pritchett watched and listened to people as a naturalist observes wild creatures and birds. He knew that oddity is the norm, not the exception.” This finely attuned sense, coupled with an understanding that nothing in life is mundane, is what makes these stories so immensely enjoyable. Drawing on a vast treasure chest of writings, Treglown has selected sixteen of Pritchett's gems, including "A Serious Question,” which makes its debut in book form here. Featuring some of the best work from a long career, this new compilation of Pritchett's brilliantly compact stories illuminates his legendary skills.

Were Thomas Jefferson alive to read this book, he would recognize every sentence, every elegant turn of phrase, every lofty, beautifully expressed idea. Indeed, every word in the book is his. In an astonishing feat of editing, Eric S. Petersen has culled the entirety of Thomas Jefferson's published works to fashion thirty-four original essays on themes ranging from patriotism and liberty to hope, humility, and gratitude. The result is a lucid, inspiring distillation of the wisdom of one of America's greatest political thinkers.From his personal motto—"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”—to his resounding discourse on "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson defined the essential truth of the American spirit. In the essays that Petersen has crafted from letters, speeches, and public documents, Jefferson's unique moral philosophy and vision shine through. Among the hundreds of magnificent sentences gathered in this volume, here are Jefferson's pronouncements onGratitude: "I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations—to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances, to be open and generous.”Religion: "A concern purely between our God and our consciences.”America's national character: "It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty with resolution and contrivance.”Public debt: "We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves.”War: "I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.”In stately measured cadences, these thirty-four essays provide timeless guidance on leading a spiritually fulfilling life. Light and Liberty is a triumphant work of supreme eloquence, as uplifting today as when Jefferson first set these immortal sentences on paper.

"[Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself-makes [We] superior to Huxley's [Brave New World]."-George OrwellTranslated by Natasha Randall • Foreword by Bruce Sterling Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love. At once satirical and sobering-and now available in a powerful new translation-We is both a rediscovered classic and a work of tremendous relevance to our own times.